Editing Seyyed Hossein Nasr (section)

===God and the world===

According to Nasr, the "Divine Reality" includes, metaphysically speaking, an "Impersonal Essence" and a personal aspect that the believer "ordinarily identifies with God", in accordance with the perspective of "most religions". Only the "esoteric dimension" within these religions take into account the "Impersonal Essence", as can be seen most notably in "the [[Kabbalah]], [[Sufism]], and among many Christian mystics such as [[Meister Eckhart]] and [[Angelus Silesius]]".{{sfn|Hahn|2001|p=229}} "God as ultimate Reality" is thus at the same time "Essence" and "Person" or "Supra-Being and Being".{{sfn|The Need for a Sacred Science|1993|p=5}} Understood in this way, God or the Principle,

{{blockquote|is Reality in contrast to all that appears as real but which is not reality in the ultimate sense. The Principle is the Absolute compared to which all is relative. It is Infinite while all else is finite. The Principle is One and Unique while manifestation is multiplicity. It is the Supreme Substance compared to which all else is accident. It is the Essence to which all things are juxtaposed as form. It is at once Beyond Being and Being while the order of multiplicity is {{sic|comprised |hide=y|of}} existents. It alone ''is'' while all else becomes, for It alone is eternal in the ultimate sense while all that is externalized partakes of change. It is the Origin but also the End, the alpha and the omega. It is Emptiness if the world is envisaged as fullness and Fullness if the relative is perceived in the light of its ontological poverty and essential nothingness. These are all manners of speaking of the Ultimate Reality which can be known but not by man as such. It can only be known through the sun of the Divine Self residing at the center of the human soul.{{sfn|Knowledge and the Sacred|1989|p=121-122}}}}

God is not only "Absolute and Infinite", he is also "the Supreme Good or Perfection". Now, according to Nasr, the specificity of infinitude and of good ''in divinis'' requires that they exteriorize themselves, that is to say, that they manifest themselves in multiplicity, hence the world.{{sfn|Knowledge and the Sacred|1989|p=122}}{{efn|According to Saint Augustine, Nasr reminds us, "it is in the nature of the good to give of itself". ''The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr'', 2001, p. 584}} A world that is imperfect despite the perfection of its source because, as Nasr explains, this exteriorization implies a distance from the "Good", hence the presence of evil; the latter, contrary to the good, does not have its root in God.{{sfn|The Need for a Sacred Science|1993 |p=6}}{{sfn|Hahn |2001 |p=586}} This "imperfect world" – the visible and tangible world of man – constitutes only the periphery of a hierarchy of increasingly subtle "worlds" according to their degree of proximity to Being.{{sfn|The Garden of Truth|2008|p=41}}

For Nasr, God is the only reality, and the world, which participates in his reality is therefore "unreal", not as "nothingness pure and simple" but as "relative reality"; it is an illusion to consider the world, says Nasr, as "reality" in the same way as the Principle. Nasr holds that traditional wisdom or the ''sophia perennis'' "has always seen God as Reality and the world as a dream from which the sage awakens through [spiritual] realization ... and the ordinary man through death". To consider the world as "the reality ... as is done by most modern philosophy ... leads to nihilism and skepticism by reducing God to an abstraction, to the 'unreal', and philosophy itself to the discussion of more or less secondary questions or to providing clever answers to ill-posed problems".{{sfn|The Need for a Sacred Science|1993|p=7}}

For Nasr, "Ultimate Reality" is at once "above everything" and "omnipresent"{{sfn|The Need for a Sacred Science|1993|p=15}} in the universe, "transcendent and immanent".{{sfn|Hahn|2001|p=585}}{{sfn|Knowledge and the Sacred|1989|p=209}} On the human plane, still according to Nasr, "The Reality" – or "The Truth"{{efn|"Islam is a religion which is based completely on the doctrine of the oneness of God, and is a religion in which God is seen as both Reality and Truth, the Arabic term ''al-haqīqah'' meaning both. In fact the word ''al-Haqq'' (The Truth), which is related to ''haqīqah'', is a Name of God." Nasr, ''The Need for a Sacred Science'', 1993, p. 7.}} – lies in the heart of man "created in the image of God",{{sfn|Knowledge and the Sacred|1989|p=145}} whence the possibility of a "unitive knowledge which sees the world not as separative creation but as manifestation that is united through symbols and the very ray of existence".{{sfn|Knowledge and the Sacred|1989|p=124}}